JP4215075B2 - Information processing device - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus , and more particularly to a method for detecting a storable capacity and presenting it to a user when program data received by digital broadcasting is stored in a storage means.

  In recent years, the spread of digital broadcasting has rapidly advanced, and BS digital broadcasting services using broadcasting satellites have been provided following CS digital broadcasting by communication satellites. Since digital broadcasting compresses and digitizes program data, it is possible to store programs on a hard disk drive (hereinafter abbreviated as HDD), which is a digital data storage medium that has been used in PCs (Personal Computers). It has become.

  In the HDD, it is important to efficiently store and manage the HDD because the storage medium cannot be easily exchanged in terms of price and structure as compared with a video tape recorder or the like as a conventional recording device. As such a conventional example, a method as disclosed in JP 2000-41066 A is known. This is a method for efficiently accumulating unnecessary data without accumulating unnecessary data by selectively accumulating necessary packets from input data.

  FIG. 16 shows a configuration example of the conventional example, and the operation will be described. In FIG. 16, the part indicated by a solid line is hardware, and the part indicated by a broken line is software. 901 is a computer, 902 is software for controlling the operation of the computer 901 as a storage device, 903 is a decoding device, 904 is a moving image data output device such as an encoding device, and 905 is for outputting encoded moving image data. An output board, 906 is an input board for inputting encoded video data, 907 is an application for sending commands to the stream control software 902, 908 is a communication board for communicating with the outside, and 909 is a received video Storage means such as an HDD for storing.

  First, moving image data output from the moving image data output device 904 and multiplexed in units of packets is input to the stream control program 902 via the input board 906. An instruction to start accumulation is given via the application 907. Upon receiving an instruction to start accumulation, the stream control program 902 analyzes data when accumulating input data in the accumulating unit 909, determines whether or not it is necessary data, and accumulates only necessary data. Here, the number of packets not accumulated is accumulated at the same time, and can be reproduced at normal intervals by referring to this during reproduction. In this way, the data is stored, and when the end of storage is instructed, the storage ends.

  In the above-described conventional example, a technique has been proposed in which unnecessary data packets are not stored, so that storage is efficiently performed and the capacity of the storage means is not wasted. However, it does not mention how to present information such as how much capacity remains in the storage means or how many hours can be stored, that is, it does not consider how to efficiently manage the storage means. It was.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an information processing apparatus that efficiently manages storage means.

  In order to achieve the above object, the technical idea disclosed in the claims may be used.

According to the present invention, it is possible to provide an information processing apparatus that efficiently manages storage means.

  An embodiment of a digital broadcast storage / playback apparatus according to the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an embodiment of a digital broadcast storage / playback apparatus according to the present invention.

  In FIG. 1, 10 is an input terminal for packetized and multiplexed stream data, 20 is a demultiplexer for separating a designated packet from the stream, and 30 is a control means for controlling the entire digital broadcast storage and reproduction apparatus of FIG. , 40 is a storage means controller for controlling data input / output of the storage means to be described later, 50 is a storage means, 60 is a data processing RAM (Random Access Memory) of the control means 30, and 70 is a decoder for encoded video / audio. 80, OSD means for superimposing the OSD on the output video signal of the decoder 70, 90 an output terminal for the video signal on which the OSD is superimposed, 100 an output terminal for the decoded audio signal, and 110 a remote controller (not shown) ) And the like, a command input terminal for inputting a command to the digital broadcast storage and playback device, and 120 is a control program of the control means 30. Gram is a flash memory that stores like.

  In FIG. 1, data input from the stream data input terminal 10 is input to the demultiplexer 20. The input data described in the present embodiment is a video data, audio data, data broadcast data, and various data for use in receiver operation control, etc. obtained by receiving a digital broadcast, multiplexed in packet units. It has been done. An example of the input data is shown in FIG. In FIG. 2, reference numeral 11 denotes a transport stream (hereinafter abbreviated as TS) in ISO / IEC13818-1 (commonly referred to as MPEG2 system standard), which is PAT (Program Association Table) and PMT (Program Map) which are data used for channel selection and the like. Table), NIT (Network Information Table), and packets of video 1, audio 1, video 2, audio 2 and the like constituting the received television program are multiplexed.

  FIG. 3 shows a program selection procedure, and the program selection operation will be described. When the user selects a desired program with a remote controller or the like in the first step, a corresponding command is input from the command input terminal 110 to the control means 30. In the next step, the control means 30 controls the demultiplexer 20 to separate the PAT information and transfer it to the control means 30. PAT stores PMT identification information (Packet ID = PID) included in the input stream. The control means 30 recognizes the PMT PID by analyzing the PAT, controls the demultiplexer 20 in the next step, separates the PMT packet, and transfers it to the control means 30. The PMT is a packet for storing a PID of a packet in which video / audio of a program is stored, and a different PID is assigned to each program. Therefore, the channel selection means 30 separates and transfers the PMT corresponding to the program selected by the user to the demultiplexer 20 and analyzes it. In the next step, the control means 30 controls the demultiplexer 20 in accordance with the information obtained by analyzing the PMT, and separates video and audio packets of the program selected by the user.

  Here, when viewing the separated program as it is, only the video and audio data of the separated information is transferred to the decoder 70. The decoder 70 decodes the input encoded video data and encoded audio data, and reproduces the original video signal and audio signal. The video signal reproduced by the decoder 70 is output from the video output terminal 90 via the OSD 80 for superimposing a program guide screen or the like on the video signal, for example. The audio signal reproduced by the decoder 70 is output from the audio signal output terminal 100.

  Next, the operation when the program selected by the user is stored in the storage means 50 and reproduced will be described. When program data is stored, it is necessary to store not only video / audio packets but also information such as PAT and PMT, unlike the playback described above. This is because it is necessary when reproducing program data stored later. When playing back the stored program, data relating to the program that has not been stored is unnecessary, and conversely, if the program is selected, a program selection operation is required according to the data. Only information related to the video / audio of the selected program. That is, information that is not used like NIT is not accumulated at all, and program related information such as PAT and PMT is not accumulated as it is, but the selected program is controlled by controlling the demultiplexer 20 from the control means 30. Data other than information necessary for reproduction of the packet is deleted, for example, and the data in which the packet contents are rewritten is stored.

  When storage of a program is instructed by a user's operation, the control unit 30 controls the demultiplexer 20 to output a data packet to be stored and output it to the storage unit controller 40. The storage means controller 40 adds and records time information (time stamp) to the input data packet so that it can be reproduced at the correct time during reproduction. An example of data with a time stamp added is shown in FIG. In the example of FIG. 4, a time stamp is added before the packet data, but it may be added after the packet data. The storage means controller 40 stores packet data with a time stamp as shown in FIG. Here, the control means 30 stores the data amount of the program recorded in the storage means 50, the position of the recorded area on the storage means 50, and information related to the program, that is, the program name, the received date and time, etc. as program designation data. It is recorded in an area different from the 50 program data.

  Next, the operation for reproducing the program data stored as described above will be described. When the user performs a reproduction operation of the stored program, a reproduction command is input from the command input terminal 110. The control means 30 controls the storage means controller 40 in accordance with the reproduction command to read the program designation data from the storage means 50 and analyze the contents. The control means 30 controls the storage means controller 40 on the basis of data such as an area in which designated program data is stored in accordance with the analyzed contents, and causes the storage means 50 to read out the stored data. The read program data is transferred to the demultiplexer 20 via the storage means controller 40 at a predetermined timing in accordance with the time stamp data described above. The demultiplexer 20 separates the video / audio data from the input program data and transfers it to the decoder 70. The subsequent operation is the same as the operation at the time of reproduction described above.

  As described above, program data can be stored and reproduced in the storage means 50.

  By the way, since the storage capacity of the storage means 50 is limited, the state, that is, the usable capacity is always monitored, and presented to the user as a material for determining whether or not a desired program can be recorded. There is a need to. This operation will be described below.

  In the storage means 50, data indicating the total storage capacity is recorded in advance. When a certain program is stored in the storage means 50 by a user operation, the control means 30 records information related to the stored program in a different area. This information includes the capacity of the program data recorded as described above. Thereby, the control means 30 calculates the remaining capacity that can be used by subtracting the capacity of the stored program data from the total capacity of the storage means 50 described above, and stores the result in a further different area of the storage means 50. When the user performs an operation for knowing the remaining capacity of the storage means 50, a corresponding control command is input from the command input terminal 110 to the control means 30. When the command is input, the control unit 30 controls the storage unit controller 40 to read the data storing the usable capacity from the storage unit 50. The read data is transferred to the control means 30. The control means 30 controls the OSD means 80 on the basis of the read usable capacity data, and displays the usable capacity numerically as shown in the display example of FIG. 5 by superimposing the OSD on the video signal. .

  By doing so, the user can know the usable capacity of the storage means 50 and can use the storage means 50 efficiently.

  In the above description, the case where information relating to the accumulated program is stored in the storage unit 50 has been described. However, this is not necessarily stored in the storage unit 50. For example, an empty area of the flash memory 120 or a different storage unit is used. It may be provided and stored there. Further, in the above description, an example in which information related to accumulated programs is collectively recorded in one area has been described. However, it is not always necessary to record collectively, and for example, only information relating to capacity may be recorded in a different area. Absent. The same applies to other information. As program data storage means, storage means such as an HDD or a DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) can be used.

  FIG. 6 shows another embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 6, reference numeral 130 denotes information display means such as a liquid crystal display device. Most of the configuration is the same as that in FIG. 1, and the description thereof is omitted. When the user performs an operation to know the usable capacity of the storage unit 50, a corresponding command is input from the command input terminal 110. The control means 30 calculates the usable capacity of the storage means 50 according to the input command in the same manner as described in FIG. Based on the usable capacity thus obtained, the control means 30 controls the information display means 130 to display the usable capacity as shown in the display example of FIG. Thus, the user can know the usable capacity of the storage means 50 without looking at the display screen of a television or the like.

  In the above description, an example in which the usable capacity is presented only when the user inputs a command has been shown. However, for example, the accumulating unit 50 is provided at regular intervals according to an instruction from a control program stored in the flash memory 120. May be calculated and always displayed on the information display device 130. Alternatively, it may be possible to select whether to always display or display only when a display operation is performed by a user operation.

  In the description of FIG. 1 and FIG. 5, an example has been shown in which the usable capacity presented to the user is directly expressed as a numerical value, but it is also possible to present it in time. With reference to FIG. 7, an example of operation when presenting in time will be described.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a procedure for presenting usable capacity in a storable time corresponding to the transmission rate of a program designated by the user. When the user selects a desired program, the corresponding command is input to the control means 30 from the command input terminal 120 in FIG. 1 or FIG. In accordance with the input command, the control means 30 acquires information on the designated program via the demultiplexer 20 and confirms the transmission rate of the designated program. The information on the transmission rate is sent, for example, stored in the PMT in FIG. Thereby, the amount of data input to the storage means 50 per unit time can be known. Next, as described above, the usable capacity of the storage unit 50 is acquired and compared with the transmission rate, so that the user can know the time for recording a desired program by the following equation.
Remaining recordable time = usable capacity / transmission rate For example, when the usable capacity is 9 GB (gigabyte) and the transmission rate is 6 Mbps (megabit / sec), the recordable time is 12000 sec (about 3.3 hours). Become.

  A display example of the recordable time calculated in this way is shown in FIG.

  As described above, in the present embodiment, the remaining usable capacity can be converted into time and presented to the user, and the user can intuitively know the usable capacity, thereby improving usability. be able to.

  In the above description, an example has been shown in which the remaining capacity when the program specified by the user is accumulated is shown in time. However, even when no program is specified, the usable capacity is shown in time. It is possible. This presentation method will be described below.

  In general, the transmission rate or capacity of a television program generally depends on the resolution of the video signal before encoding. Of course, the transmission rate and capacity after encoding change depending on the compression rate setting at the time of encoding, but from the viewpoint of maintaining constant image quality, if the video signal has the same resolution, The transmission rate or capacity does not change significantly. Thereby, even when a program is not specified, it is possible to estimate the capacity required when, for example, an HDTV program is stored for one hour. For example, an encoding rate of 22 Mbps or more is appropriate for displaying high-definition programs while maintaining appropriate quality. Therefore, if the remaining usable capacity is 9 GB, the high-definition programs are stored. In this case, the time is about 54 minutes. A display example of the usable time calculated in this way is shown in FIG. In the display example of FIG. 10, since no program is specified, each recordable time when a program with a different resolution is displayed is presented.

  When knowing the transmission rate for the program being stored, the storage unit controller 40 in FIG. 1 may be used to measure the amount of data stored in the HDD per unit time. In this case, it can be applied only to the program that is actually stored, but there is an advantage that the remaining usable time can be accurately known.

  Another embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 11 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a signal input from the stream input terminal 10. Video 1H in the input stream shown in FIG. 11 is high-resolution video data of video 1, and video 1L is low-resolution video data of video 1. As shown in FIG. 11, in digital broadcasting, it is possible to multiplex and transmit signals having the same contents into one stream with different resolutions. When the usable capacity of the storage unit 50 is small, there is a case where the entire program cannot be recorded when the high-resolution video 1H is recorded. Here, in this embodiment, when the selected program includes videos of a plurality of resolutions according to the procedure shown in FIG. 12, the control means 30 calculates the usable capacity when each of the videos is stored. And has a function of presenting to the user. As a result, when it is determined that all the programs designated by storing the video 1L instead of the video 1H can be stored, a selection screen as shown in the example of FIG. 13 is displayed. As a result, the user can instruct the accumulation when the user wants to accumulate the image because it may be a low-resolution image, so that the usability can be improved.

  FIG. 14 shows another embodiment of the present invention. The embodiment of FIG. 14 differs from the embodiment of FIG. 1 in that the output after processing by the decoder 70 can be stored in addition to the output of the demultiplexer 20.

  The decoder 70 has a function of calculating and decoding input encoded data. Here, the input encoded data is composed of a plurality of components of a low frequency component and a high frequency component in the MPEG2 standard, for example. Of these components, even if the high frequency components of the image are removed, the degree of influence on the image quality when a human views the image is small. In the present embodiment, the decoder 70 has a function of processing input encoded data to remove data having a small influence on image quality such as the high-frequency component and reconstructing and outputting the input encoded data. Thus, for example, even if the program cannot be recorded entirely in the usable area of the storage means 50 with the input encoded data, the program specified by the user by removing a part of the input encoded data by the decoder 70 You can accumulate everything.

  The input encoded data from which the high frequency components have been removed by the decoder 70 may be stored in the storage means 50 as it is, or once configured in a packet format and stored by multiplexing information packets including information such as program titles. You may do it. When the data is stored as it is, it may be directly input to the decoder 70 at the time of reproduction, or may be input to the demultiplexer 20 and may be directly input to the decoding means 70 without being processed in the demultiplexer 20. When information packets are multiplexed and stored, they may be input to the demultiplexer 20 for processing.

  FIG. 15 shows another embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 15, reference numeral 140 denotes an encoder that encodes the output video signal and audio signal of the decoder 70, and 150 multiplexes the output video signal and audio signal of the encoder 140, and various information input from the control means 30 into one It is a multiplexer that multiplexes into a stream. If the usable capacity of the storage means 50 is smaller than the capacity of the entire program selected by the user, the program cannot be recorded as it is. In such a case, in FIG. 11, the video signal and the audio signal once decoded and reproduced by the decoder 70 are encoded at the encoding rate designated by the user or the encoding rate calculated by the control means 30. . The video signal and audio signal decoded by the decoder 70 are input to the encoder 140. The encoder 140 encodes and outputs the input video signal and the input audio signal at the encoding rate set by the control means 30. The multiplexer 150 packetizes and multiplexes the encoded video signal and the encoded audio signal, and also packetizes and multiplexes various information input from the control means 30. The stream multiplexed by the multiplexer 150 is input to the storage means controller 40 and stored in the storage means 50 in the same manner as when processing the stream input from the demultiplexer 20.

  In the above description, since the stream stored in the storage means 50 is composed of video data and audio data of an encoding rate set so as to be able to store all the programs specified within the usable capacity range, All programs specified by can be recorded. As a result, even when all the programs designated by the user cannot be stored at the transmission rate of the input stream, the encoding rate can be converted and recorded in the storage means 50, so that the program desired by the user can be recorded. it can.

  In the description of FIG. 15, the case where the information packet is multiplexed and stored in the multiplexer 150 has been described. However, the information packet does not necessarily have to be multiplexed. Further, at the time of reproduction, the output data of the storage means 40 may be input to the demultiplexer 70. In this case, the amount of data stored can be reduced by the amount of information packets.

It is a figure which shows the Example of the digital broadcast storage / reproducing apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the packet arrangement | sequence of the stream processed by this invention. It is a figure which shows the program selection procedure of the digital broadcast storage and reproduction apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows an example of the accumulation | storage data format in the digital broadcast accumulation | storage reproduction | regeneration apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the display screen of the digital broadcast storage and reproduction apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the Example of the digital broadcast storage / reproducing apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the information display means of the digital broadcast storage / reproducing apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the procedure which calculates the accumulation | storage possible time in the digital broadcast accumulation | storage reproduction | regeneration apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the display screen of the digital broadcast storage and reproduction apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the display screen of the digital broadcast storage and reproduction apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the packet arrangement | sequence of the stream processed by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the video data selection procedure of the digital broadcast storage and reproduction apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the example of the display screen of the digital broadcast storage and reproduction apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the Example of the digital broadcast storage / reproducing apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the Example of the digital broadcast storage / reproducing apparatus by this invention. It is a figure which shows the structural example of the multimedia storage apparatus by PC of a prior art example.

Explanation of symbols

10 Stream input terminal
20 Demultiplexer
30 control means 40 storage means controller
50 HDD
60 memory
70 decoder
80 OSD
90 Video signal output terminal 100 Audio signal output terminal 110 Command input terminal 120 Flash memory 130 Information display means 140 Encoder 500 Multiplexer

Claims (2)

A data input unit to which data obtained by multiplexing program data to be broadcast now or in the future and program configuration information of the program data is input;
A demultiplexer for separating data input to the data input unit;
An analysis unit for analyzing the turn sets configuration information separated by the demultiplexer,
A data storage unit for storing data separated by the demultiplexing unit;
A decoding unit for decoding the demultiplexed data or the data stored in the data storage means;
Output means for superimposing and outputting display data on the data decoded by the decoding unit;
A control unit,
When the control unit determines that the program data includes a plurality of pieces of data having different encoding rates while being the same program based on the program configuration information analyzed by the analysis unit, The capacity used when each is stored in the data storage unit is calculated, and the output means is controlled to present to the user candidate data to be stored in the data storage unit according to the calculation result Information processing device. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1,
When the usable capacity of the data storage unit is equal to or less than a predetermined value, the control unit selects data having the lowest encoding rate among the plurality of data having the same encoding program but different encoding rates. An information processing apparatus for controlling the output means so as to present it to a user as data to be stored in the computer.

Images